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Although many men and women live by the Boy Scout motto of “be prepared” when it comes to Valentine’s Day gift giving, some have adopted a different philosophy… wait until the last minute.

This Friday, millions of procrastinators will be buying gifts for their loved ones online to arrive in time for Valentine’s Day on Monday. For some retailers in the "Flowers, Gifts, and Greetings" categories, Friday is their second biggest sales day of the year (#1 is days leading up to Mother's Day). This means that potential last minute search assets for retailers will be highly generic terms such as “flowers” and “valentine’s gifts“. The top searches in the last seven days for the Flowers and Gift categories are listed below.

Merchants looking to drive efficient sales volume tomorrow think and value at a geo-level. Monitor the search penetration against the conversion rates for particular cities and offer localized deals to consumers. For example, over the last seven days, Insights for Search indexed the highest search volume for flowers in Boston, with Philadelphia and San Diego following closely behind.

Don’t neglect in-store last minute purchasers who will be perusing the Internet for gift ideas, store locations, hours of operation, inventory selection and deals. Be prominently positioned with gift solutions both online and in-store to ease last minute purchase anxiety. Friday is only the beginning of the weekend warrior purchases prior to Valentine’s Day, so go ahead and let the procrastinators know it not too late to express their love.